Carnival Finale... Finally

And so we come to the end of our little Carnival...



Another rehearsal shot.
All of the animals come back with brief crosses of the stage, which end in one last big pose. I did use the last movement from the original Saint Saens piece, as it is very quick and bouncy. It also is familiar to the majority of the audience. Even if they haven't heard it, many other pieces have been derived from it.

Just as I am writing this, I realize that I'll probably rechoreograph this last piece, when we perform it next year.



The architecture of the finale will remain the same, as far as the music allotted for each animal, but the style of dance will be different.

Right now, it utilizes alot of flashy ballet technique. But in writing about the musical derivation of other pieces from the finale, I remembered that Saint Saens was using well know pieces as musical "jokes" throughout.

One of these was The Tortoise. For the tortoise, Saint Saens took the melody of a very well known can-can and slowed it down to a dirge. I had pitched the piece to Culture Shock (as a popping or locking number), but they weren't interested.

Anyway, I just now realized that the finale should be a can-can. After all, Saint Saens was french. He was utilizing popular pieces of the day. And a can-can would unite all of the animals stylistically in movement.

I also stage great can-cans.



Here we have a picture after the dancers have hit the last pose. I have jumped up onstage and am about to give notes. Some dancers have broken completely. Some dancers (Chelsy and Pali) are going over transitions that they had a bit of confusion over. Others (like Abby) have decided that it takes too much effort to break their pose, so they wait "frozen" for what is coming next.



And here we have the dancers, intently listening to notes and instructions for what is coming next.

At the rehearsal, we set things out of performance order. Carnival used the most people, so we got it over first and released those not involved in anything else. We then went onto the Joplin piece, which used the next largest amount of people, and then released everyone not involved in anything else.

You get the idea.

I dislike having people wait around. It doesn't seem to bother some other directors, but I can't stand it. Not only out of respect for other people's time, but because I don't like the "energy" that I am imagining. The energy of people who are in a place, when they would rather be elsewhere. Just as with the company, if you don't want to be here, I don't enjoy having you here.

And life is to short not to be as enjoyable as possible.